


yuletide snapshots

by kestraTroi7



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Alicia/Kalinda friendship, F/F, mentions of Will and Cary and Diane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:45:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2795246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kestraTroi7/pseuds/kestraTroi7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some moments with Kalinda in the holiday season</p>
            </blockquote>





	yuletide snapshots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missymeggins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missymeggins/gifts).



> happy yuletide :)

Kalinda hardly expects to see anyone, least of all Alicia, turn up in the office so late in the evening. The restraining order (among other matters) with Cary has complicated her presence in the office for the past few weeks and she’s been taking advantage of his curfew to catch up with the details of cases when she can. So that’s what she’s doing that night, jotting down a few short sentences in the margins of her notebook when she notices Alicia pass by the conference room and head in to her office, shuffling through some files on her desk. 

She looks down deliberately as Alicia makes her way out of her office to give her the chance to walk away. So it’s her second surprise of the night (and not a bad one by any measure) when she hears Alicia’s voice.

“Hi, Kalinda.”

She lowers the case file she’s been looking through and meets Alicia’s gaze. “Hey.”

“I haven’t seen you around. What are you still doing here?”

Kalinda shrugs. “Just going over a case.”

“Cary’s case?” Alicia’s eyes overflow with curiosity.

“No. Something for Diane, for tomorrow.”

Alicia nods, and Kalinda’s not sure what to say at all. She’s comfortable with silence, but with Alicia the silences tend to brim with unsaid words that hang perennially just out of reach and when they go on too long she starts to fill in the blanks herself. It's hardly a game she enjoys, so she breaks it. “You?”

Alicia flutters the piece of paper in her hands. “Guest list for the holiday party next week. John, my campaign manager, wants to ‘approve’ it before we send out the invites.” The disdain is more than evident in her voice, and Kalinda can tell (as before) how Alicia dislikes the scrutiny that comes with the spotlight.

“I thought Robyn sent them out yesterday…” She recalls, and Alicia makes a face.

“Yeah…I suppose I _should_ mention that to him at some point.”

She offers Alicia a small smile before catching a name on the list. “Colin Sweeney?”

Alicia properly laughs at that and it’s been so, so long since Kalinda has seen her laugh so genuinely with her that her breath catches in her throat for a moment before she remembers to let it out.

“Yeah, well, at least we didn’t have to invite Bishop this year…” At Bishop’s name she almost flinches but catches herself when she sees Alicia watching her so closely. There aren’t many people Kalinda is legitimately afraid of, but this is Lemond Bishop, who has threatened her and threatened Cary and has intimidated/killed off witnesses as he’s deemed fit. (And God only knew what he wants with Lana and that blank card Kalinda hadn’t put in her wallet.)

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” She shakes her head slightly, clears it. “You had Bishop at your party last year?”

“Oh yeah. He was there. And Peter. Both crammed in to our little start-up offices…” Alicia rolls her eyes. “Eli was going crazy.” 

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

And the silence is back. Alicia looks like she wants to say something but she’s biting her lip. Kalinda breaks her gaze. “Kalinda… What’s going on with Bishop? I went to see Cary and he seems to think he’s safe, for now anyway, but he told me that Bishop… said something to you in court.”

“He did. But it’s fine.” There’s no way in hell she’s telling Alicia about what happened in Bishop’s kitchen, the barely veiled threats and the nights he’s turned up unannounced, bidding her to get in his car. “I’m handling it.” 

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” And in an instant, Alicia’s tone goes from warm to flat. “I should be getting home. I’ll see you at the party.”

“ ‘Night.” Kalinda replies. And she’s left watching Alicia walk away. (Again.)

***

Lana calls her the next afternoon, says she has to meet. That it can’t wait. The urgency in Lana's tone overrides her common sense and as she sits in the apartment, waiting, scenarios flash through her head. Far too prominent is the one where Bishop comes to snap Lana’s neck and then hers, because of that white card she snapped herself. (It can’t be that, of course, because it’s Lana calling and not Bishop, but it doesn’t stop her from imagining Lana limp and bloodless and glassy-eyed on the floor, bullet to the head. Like Will. And she doesn’t think she can bear that again.)

So when Lana walks through the door and pours herself a glass of wine that Kalinda’s picked out without a word it falls to her to say something first. “What’s going on, Lana?”

“I think I got fired today.” Lana says it casually. Too casually.

In spite of herself though, she almost sighs with relief. It’s not Bishop. “Why?” She dares to ask.

“The wiretap.” Lana gives her a long, hard look, “The Bishop wiretap.” (Damn.) “The one I gave you. They found out it got leaked and I think they know it was me.” Lana’s stress comes out only a little in her words - of course she’s good at masking it when she wants to be, as her job requires. “Did you tell someone that I was the one that gave it to you?”

“No.”

Lana kicks off her heels and sits down on the bed beside her.

“So you were fired?”

“Not exactly. It was just suggested to me, and by suggested I mean I was more or less ordered to take two weeks of leave by the same man who asked me about the Bishop wiretap… They’re going to find something that ties me to that leak and then they’re going to tell me I don’t need to come back.”

“I’m sorry,” it's all she can offer, because Lana is more than likely correct. She's already heard about what Cary said about them in the meeting with Agent Harper after all.

Kalinda wants to be able tell Lana that she can help her, that she can take care of this, and actually mean it. She wants to be able to go to the FBI and find some dirt on this man that’s ordering her around and get him to back the hell off. But it’s the FBI and she’ll be cutting off one head that'll be replaced by another, with the same evidence and files and authority and the case will still be open and Lana will still be blamed for this leak. (That's not to say that there aren't other, more creative options.)

“It's not your fault. You said you didn’t tell anyone about the wiretap.”

“I didn’t. But I did ask you for the wire… So I’m sorry.”

Lana nods and semi-smiles, taking another long sip of wine.

She pulls off her own leather jacket and guides Lana’s wine glass back to the table, interlacing her slim fingers in her own and leaning in to kiss her. (The constant of their relationship is desire. They want each other. And it used to be in different ways but the gap is closing and Kalinda wants her to know it.) “So let me distract you.”

Lana seems taken aback momentarily but seems to relax in to the moment before she abruptly pulls away barely a few seconds later untangling their fingers and closing her eyes in what seems like exasperation. “You know, I actually thought you meant it.”

“Meant what?”

“Meant it when you said that you took me seriously.” Her voice is laced with hurt and her eyes harden to not let Kalinda in. “But I can never be more than just sex and information to you, can I?”

(You can be, you are.) Lana reaches down and starts to pull her shoes back on. “Lana, you know you mean more to me than that.”

“No, I don’t know. And I can’t.”

She stands up and starts to walk away. And in that fraction of a moment Kalinda forces herself to consider Lana.

There is/always will be a part of her that gnaws and gnaws at her and keeps wondering whether this is what she wants, and whether she and Lana make sense beyond the bedroom. Whether they only belong together when they’re screwing each other senseless. Cause part of this is uncharted territory and the rest makes more sense than she can begin to put in to words. (But she can try, for the sake of that part, and for Lana.)

“I never told my parents.”

“What?”

She takes a breath and says it quickly before her resolve crackles and dies and she doesn’t say the words, “You asked me if I told my parents, about me… and other women. I didn't.”

And Lana stops, hand on the doorknob, and turns back to face her. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you asked.” She avoids Lana’s gaze. She doesn’t know how she is meant to look at her in this moment but stares at a part of the wall she isn’t really seeing because she is focusing on Lana and keeping her out of sight all at once. 

“Kalinda…”

“It’s not easy for me, Lana. I don’t do this. I don’t talk about me.”

Lana gives her a searching look but seems satisfied, taking a few steps back towards her. “Why didn’t you tell them?”

Kalinda reaches for the chain around her neck, almost reflexively, and runs her fingers over the small symbol of a past long buried, aching to be forgotten. She wants to tell Lana but every instinct in her body screams against it, it is so, so foreign to her, what she is doing right now with Lana. 

“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me right now,” Lana murmurs in quiet understanding.

So she doesn’t, because she doesn’t think she can truthfully offer Lana more. There are a lot of words she actually would like to say right now to Lana, a lot of things she would like to tell her. Things that are present tense and not past. (But she doesn’t.)

“I take you seriously,” She says again instead.

***

She goes to visit Will. 

(It’s almost Christmas after all, and Will had loved Christmas.)

It’s starts to rain as she’s driving and by the time she gets there it’s positively bucketing down on her but, umbrella in hand, she makes her way through the immaculate grass to find the stone that bears his name.

A bunch of soaked flowers are already lying on the headstone. Maybe his sisters, she’d heard they’d been in the city a few days ago. Maybe Diane.

Almost a month after Will’s death, as David Lee and Louis Canning had been plotting against them, she and Diane had gone out. Gotten ridiculously drunk, well beyond the level of drunkenness she would ever have expected from Diane. She can barely remember the details of what had been said then but she does remember Diane mentioning, early in the night, how she’d told Will when he’d been facing the Grand Jury Indictment that she’d visit him every Friday. And her voice had cracked as she told Kalinda about how she’d not been able to keep her promise. 

She can feel her eyes sting with tears she won’t let fall. (God, does she miss him. She misses seeing him in court, meeting him for drinks, handing him evidence and catching his baseball as he throws it across the room to her with a wink. She misses the way he’d call her ‘K’. She misses her friend, her last, her only friend.)

There’s a Will-shaped hole in her heart, there’s something missing. She feels all those clichés about loss for Will Gardner, and feels them unashamedly because it was Will, and she loved him.

She’d brought a flask with her and she’s been unscrewing the lid, thinking to share a drink with Will (it’s nearly Christmas, after all). She starts to raise the flask to her lips, but the sight of an elderly pair wandering about barely ten meters from where she’s standing makes her realize the futility of what she's trying to recreate and she hastily re-screws the flask, taking a step back.

She brushes her fingers along the headstone and straightens the few flowers that sit atop it.

“Merry Christmas, Will.”

***

Kalinda has no idea why she’s even at this party (well actually, she’s knows she’s here because Alicia asked, but she’s still not sure _why_ ). She does understand why the party is happening, of course (“It’s for the clients. We need them to know that we’re still strong despite Alicia’s attentions being divided and Cary’s… troubles,” - Diane) but it feels awfully hollow when she thinks about how Cary will be spending his Christmas. There’s just hardly a point to her presence here. Her work being behind the scenes, next to none of the clients even know her face, and she's hardly adding to the cheery party atmosphere.

Robyn has been hanging around her for most of night, periodically dipping in to the crowds to grab some fancy-looking delicacy from the plates around the room before scooting back out to find her. She likes Robyn, and she respects that her quirk complements rather than compromises her skill as an investigator.

“So, what are your plans for the holidays?” Robyn asks, wide-eyed as ever.

Kalinda raises her eyebrows ever-so-slightly in response. 

“Oh, come on! You must have something planned!”

“Who says I have to have something planned?”

Robyn purses her lips, “Well, no-one. But you know, it’s Christmas! And the New Year! Haven’t you got family staying over or something?”

Kalinda looks away and smiles to herself for a moment at Robyn’s perplexed expression before turning back to face her, deliberately expressionless. “No.” 

“Oh, okay. Well that's fine too. I mean, obviously you can spend the holidays however you want…” She trails off as she sees Colin Sweeney walk by and smile at them slimily as he walks towards Alicia. “Ugh. He creeps me out.”

Kalinda doesn’t say anything as she watches Alicia. She, along with Diane had been whisked around from client to client all evening, exchanging a few polite words over a glass of wine with each. By this point, she’s had a lot of glasses and her words seem to be slurring very slightly as she greets each new face. Not to mention, of course, that matching her impeccable red suit, there sits a lopsided Santa hat perched atop her head. The hat had turned up at some point in the second hour of the party (Kalinda regrets not paying attention to the moment when) and it surprises her more than a little that Alicia doesn’t seem to mind.

Sweeney approaches Alicia from behind and she jumps a little when she sees that it’s him, before plastering on a smile and greeting him loudly. Kalinda’s still watching the interaction when she registers Robyn again.

“You don’t think so?”

“What?”

“You don’t think he’s creepy?”

“Sure I do. But it doesn’t matter, he’s our client.”

“I know, I know. It’s just, I wish that we didn’t need to represent people like him.” Robyn says as she starts munching on a cracker topped with a presumably expensive cheese.

She and Robyn watch as Sweeney turns a massively unsavory smile on Alicia and points to the hat on her head. Alicia makes to take it off but stops at his urging, rolling her eyes spectacularly, and that's when she catches Kalinda staring. She looks away quickly but Alicia is already muttering a few words to Sweeney and heads towards where she and Robyn are standing. 

“God, I thought he’d never leave me alone,” Alicia says, rubbing her forehead.

“He was talking to you for less than five minutes,” Robyn points out, cocking her head.

Alicia flourishes her wine glass about before her. “It’s been a long night…”

"Oh, no! I totally get it. I mean, it's _Colin Sweeney_..."

Kalinda's still watching Alicia, and she bites her lip but can’t really help it when a short laugh escapes her lips.

“What?” Alicia asks, clearly confused.

“Nice hat.” She says, managing to keep a straight face.

Alicia narrows her eyes and sets her wine glass firmly down before pulling the hat off her own head and setting it on Kalinda's instead. 

“Hey!” She jerks away and quickly yanks it off, but she feels an undeniable lightness in her heart that’s echoed in Alicia’s twinkling eyes at this easy interaction that harkens back to earlier (happier) days between them.

“Oh, come on, Kalinda! Don’t look so glum about it. Put on the hat, get in the festive mood.”

She chucks the hat back to Alicia, who catches it and throws it over to Robyn who happily claims it. On Robyn it makes sense – she looks every inch the helpful elf off to lug presents all over the world without complaint.

“Have you guys tried these crackers though? They are just something else. I just, I’m going to go get some… more… You want some?” Robyn asks them both.

She and Alicia shake their heads, and their smiles fade a little as they’re left alone again. Several clients eye Alicia pointedly and circle a few feet away as she stands there with Kalinda in silence. 

“So…” Alicia looks around the room at the party that shows no signs of winding down yet, “I should probably get back out there.”

“How many clients to go?”

“Too many... And Diane told me to join her at some point for a toast. I think. Honestly, I only half remember talking about it with her...”

Kalinda nods her understanding as Alicia grabs her glass and starts to walk away, when suddenly she whips around again.

“It’s been sort of crazy lately, between the campaign and the firm and everything that’s been going on with Cary’s case…and I know it’s almost Christmas… but do you want to grab a drink?”

Not quite sure what’s she’s asking (well she is, almost, but she doesn’t want to assume in case she’s wrong) Kalinda looks rather pointedly at the drink in Alicia’s hand. 

“Oh, no, not now. Sometime next week?”

And Alicia pauses then awaiting her reply, startlingly sober in an instant, and Kalinda isn’t sure whether that look in her eyes means she’s asking for an inch or a mile or expecting nothing at all cause she’s already given up. 

“Sure,” she answers. (Because what else can she say? It’s Alicia.)

***

“What are you thinking about?” Lana asks, as she rolls over in bed.

(You.)

“How many days do you have left?”

Lana starts to run her fingers through Kalinda’s hair playfully. It’s an odd sensation to feel her hair twirled and twisted around fingers not her own, particularly given that her hair is seldom untied in any case. “Of what?” 

“Leave. Six days?”

“Seven… technically, but the real answer is probably infinity so it doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. You’re a good agent.” Maybe it’s not enough, but it’s true, and she’s come to realize that a smaller truth will mean more than any lie.

Lana props her head up on her hand and sighs, watching her, “You know, you should have come and worked with me when I asked.”

(She'd never really considered it in earnest, but maybe Lana's right. At the time, of course, there had been a promise to Will, but that doesn't exist any more. Although now, nor does Lana's suggestion/offer.)

“Working… _for_ you, is the way I remember you phrasing it,” she recalls, and Lana makes a face.

“Oh, was that it?”

“Uh-huh.” She punctuates it with a kiss.

Lana rolls her eyes and starts to play with Kalinda’s hair again.

“Let’s go somewhere,” she says suddenly, “For Christmas.” And Kalinda surprises herself a little because she’s not entirely against the suggestion. She feels impulsive and a little reckless (probably something to do with Bishop, and not knowing whether he wants her dead, or wants to keep using her as a pawn in his games with the SA's office) and while it’s not ideal for casework or being in the office, she's not at work right now. 

“Alright,” She replies murmuring her reply in to Lana’s ear. “Where?”

“I don’t know. We can drive until we get there.”

She’d normally say no, but it’s Lana and Lana is different and important so she makes to nod, but Lana’s face isn’t by hers anymore, she’s disappeared further down the sheets in a rustle of material.

“I can take you somewhere else first.”

And she starts to kiss her way back down Kalinda’s frame. 

***

They order tequila from the bartender (he too wears a holiday hat, and Kalinda barely restrains herself from laughing at the sight of it). Make a few odd comments about this and that ( _Cary seems to be doing okay, how’s the campaign?_ ) which they’ve talked about enough already with others that it hardly fuels half a conversation. Lapse in to yet another fidgety silence that’s hard to break. 

Then Alicia signals the bartender for another round of drinks for the both of them and turns to eye her impassively, “Would you vote for me?”

Kalinda cocks her head. It’s not a question she’s expecting and while they’ve skirted over how Alicia’s campaign is going (so-so, closing the gap with Prady) they haven’t actually _talked_ about it (though to be fair, they haven’t actually talked about anything lately…). 

“I might.”

“Might?”

She shrugs and drains her glass. “You haven’t convinced me. I have no idea why you’re running.”

“I’ve done… interviews, Kalinda, a lot of interviews. I’ve told them what I would do and how I would –“

Kalinda cuts her off there, because this has confused her (not that she would care to admit it) for a while now. They haven’t been talking, but she had been taking rumors of Alicia's candidacy as just that, and her announcement that she was indeed running has been another in a long line of moments that have served to affirm just how far removed from Alicia's orbit she has come to be these days. “I know. And I’ve seen some of them. You just haven’t convinced me. Why are you running?”

“Because Castro’s corrupt.”

“He’s not running anymore. I don’t understand why you are.”

“I…” Alicia’s face crumples a little and Kalinda draws back, and softens her tone.

“Why are you running, Alicia?”

“Because. I don’t know. After… Will," Her voice quivers as she says his name, "I just didn’t know what to do anymore. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a lawyer. None of it was making sense. And there we were, Florrick Agos, expanding every day, and all I could hear in my mind was Cary telling me that we were the new Will and Diane. I didn’t know if I wanted to be. Maybe it was too late for me to realize that then…but, I don't know...” She trails off awkwardly.

Kalinda offers a tentative smile. “So you went in to politics…?”

Alicia snorts. “Well I can’t give you a definitive reason why. Eli asked me to run and it just made more sense than it didn’t.”

Kalinda raises her eyebrows. It’s not a very convincing argument (is it even an argument?) but that matters less to her than the answer to her next question. “Do you want it?”

“Want what?”

“To be State’s Attorney?”

Alicia gives her an odd look. “I’m running…”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I would do a good job.”

She doesn’t say anything to that. If Alicia doesn’t have an answer to the question she won’t press her. (Not today.)

“I don’t think it matters whether or not I want it. I’d do a good job at it. _Gloria Steinem_ said I would do a good job.” (Gloria Stei – _What?_ ) “So I think that what matters is that it makes sense.”

Kalinda’s still not altogether sure that it does, but she nods anyway. “If you say so.”

“So do I have your vote?”

“You’re getting… closer to it,” she responds, noncommittal, though she already knows that if she votes, it will be for Alicia.

As the thought flits through her mind, Alicia huffs and orders yet another round. They should probably be pacing themselves, but for all she knows, Alicia is planning on this being the last round anyway. She still has Grace at home after all, and perhaps Zach – Alicia had ignored her question on Zach completely, looking annoyed, though she didn’t know if it was about the question or her being the one asking.

Their drinks turn up in moments and Alicia taps the side of the glass with her finger before she looks up again at Kalinda. 

“I’ve been talking to Finn… Polmar a lot recently, you know Finn?” Of course she does, prosecutor on Cary’s case before ASA Pine, who doesn’t recognise her voice over the phone. Fair and reasonable, but a little dull for her tastes, though she can certainly see the appeal of uncomplicated kindness. “We’ve been getting drinks, well, we were for a while.” The latter half of the sentence is muttered a little under her breath.

She’s not sure (maybe her Alicia senses are rusty from underuse) but she thinks she senses a shade/more of that spark that was in Alicia’s eyes when she used to talk about Will an age and a half ago. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. She’s not at all sure why Alicia’s brought up Polmar in any case.

“You’ve probably been talking to friends too, right?”

The question makes her freeze (internally). _Friends._ Will was her friend. Alicia too. She doesn’t know what to call Diane, but ‘friend’ hardly seems appropriate. Cary is complicated but she can’t actually see him, and Lana is Lana, and calling her a friend gets her a slap on the ass. She doesn’t really have friends. 

“I have.”

Alicia gives her a searching look, but settles fairly quickly. “Good, I’m glad. I haven’t seen you, Kalinda, and after Will… I just… I know he was your friend too. I’ve just been hoping you haven’t been… alone.”

She sucks in a breath and looks away from Alicia for a moment, she feels like she’s shattering and being pieced back together all at once. “I’m alright.”

There’s a pause between them, and the club music in the background of their conversation transitions to something even more annoyingly loud and upbeat. Alicia doesn’t seem to notice, but having lived/living in a political spotlight, she’s probably more accustomed to tuning out the background noise than paying it any mind.

“It’s been a long time since we did this… “ Alicia says suddenly, raising her voice so she’s heard. “Gone out for drinks and talked, I can’t remember the last time.”

“Neither can I.” (That’s a lie, she can remember, because it’s been so long. She's barely seen Alicia in the offices, in court even, it's all been over the phone between them lately.) “I’ve hardly seen you at all…”

“Well, apart from Will’s funeral.”

And, in unison, they drink to that (and to Will, though they don’t say it out loud).

But actually, that’s not true either. She tries to gauge Alicia’s mood, but her drinking companion is looking downwards at her watch and it might just be getting late enough that Alicia would want to be getting home, so Kalinda figures she should take advantage of the liquid courage and to hell with it. (She’s leaving with Lana on her impromptu Christmas trip tomorrow anyhow, so even if she says the wrong thing, her focus will certainly be elsewhere for the next few days.)

“Longer, actually,” She counters, and Alicia looks up at her, mildly quizzical. “Before you left. You never even told me you were leaving. Robyn told me. I had no idea.”

She bites her lip to stem the flow of words that threaten to overflow to what she reasonably can say because _damn_ is there more that she has been holding back.

“You know, Will thought you’d told me too. He actually thought that I was going with you, but I didn’t even know you were leaving. Of course, Will thought we were still close.”

And maybe she says it a little too coldly, unfeelingly, because Alicia’s eyes reflect the hurt that she remembers masking in her own when Robyn had told her so, so casually that oh, yes, Alicia was in fact leaving with Cary too. 

“Kalinda…” She can see Alicia scramble for the words. “When I decided to leave, Cary had already put it all in to motion. He said we could afford Robyn and we couldn’t afford you. I didn’t think it would make a difference if you knew I was leaving.”

She almost doesn’t reply to that, but if she’s ever going to say something it’ll be now. “It would have. I still might not have come with you, Alicia, but it would have made a difference to me.”

Alicia nods. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“I know. But I am.”

“You don’t have to be because I know what I did to you was worse, maybe even unforgivable,” It stings to say the words herself because she’s tried over and over to justify what she did because she didn’t know Alicia back then, but she manages to get them out, shooting a rueful glance at Alicia. “But I thought… that we were starting to… move past it. I don’t know what happened, but it was getting better for a while and then it wasn’t.”

Alicia shakes her head very slightly. “You’re right. I don’t know what happened either. Things, not just you, but _life_ was just moving too fast and maybe I thought of the wrong things first.”

She has an inkling of an idea of what Alicia means by that but she doesn’t press her on it now, so Alicia keeps talking, “You remember what you told me two years ago, in that hotel room in Minnesota?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too… I’ve missed this. And I don’t know if that’s crazy or not, with all the stuff that’s happened in the past… But a lot is happening right now that I can’t control and a lot is changing, but right now, sitting here and getting a drink with you makes sense to me, it feels right.”

“So let’s do this again,” She extends the offer then, because it makes sense to her too, and while there is Lana and Cary, and Will (well, was) and Diane, there has always been Alicia and she has missed her and this in a peculiar, particular way for far longer than she would care to admit.

And it’s a long pause (a little too long, maybe, but she tells herself not to care because it does indeed come to an end) before Alicia nods, “Okay.”

(So this time, a few hours later when Alicia walks away at the end of the night – after they’ve talked about Christmas and the family and friends that you’re meant to spend the holiday season with, so that's Zach (who she barely seems to want to acknowledge – so it’s him, and not her it seems) and Grace (partaking in a Christmas Recital), and Alicia’s mother and brother. Somewhere along the way Finn Polmar’s name comes up and Alicia seems a little confused and a lot drunk by that point, so she doesn't find out a whole lot she couldn't have inferred by observation. Kalinda even mentions Lana (as Agent Delaney, FBI) and the spur of the moment trip they haven't planned for nearly a full minute before withdrawing the topic completely – Kalinda doesn’t watch as she fades away in to the swarm of people dancing, laughing, celebrating, feeling more miserable than she would care to admit.

Instead she swills down her final drink, and heads out herself, a slight smile crossing her face as she realizes she is content in a way she hasn’t felt for over three years, Alicia’s final words to her before she left echoing through her mind.

_“Merry Christmas… And… I’ll see you soon, Kalinda.”)_


End file.
